Any Day Now, Santa Claus

By Mark Gongloff

Only 11 shopping days ’til Christmas, and the Santa Claus Rally everybody expected has still not arrived.

It has so far gone the way of the big November rally, which never happened, unless you count the pop from November 28 to the first week of December.

Will that pop also be all we get in the way of a December rally?

Some are arguing that all the negativity has gone too far, that it’s time to buy.

Maybe so, but we really haven’t fallen very far in the scheme of things in the past few days.

The Dow fell 1.1% today and is down 3% in the past three days.

The S&P fell 1.1% today and 3.5% in the past three days.

The Nasdaq fell 1.6% today and 4.1% in the past three days.

Those are small moves relative to what we’ve seen in this crazy second half of 2011, and the major indexes are still well above their lows even for November, not to mention their lows of October or August.

The VIX, meanwhile, is still below 30.

With the euro once again melting down and Italian bond yields melting up, I’d say we could still get plenty more negative.

Comments (1 of 1)

Anyone notice the precipitous decline in the ECB's deposit facility reported tuesday morning? 346 to 140, something's not right there. published at the time italy's auction results came out, which looks to have helped the euro's nose-dive

Thanks for reading MarketBeat. We would like to direct you to MoneyBeat, the Wall Street Journal’s brand new global blog. MoneyBeat unites MarketBeat, The Source, Overheard and all the Deal Journal blogs, bringing together all the market, M&A, IPO and hedge-fund news from those blogs into a 24-hour hub for finance news. Check it out and let us know what you think at moneyblog@wsj.com.

About MarketBeat

MarketBeat looks under the hood of Wall Street each day, finding market-moving news, analyzing trends and highlighting noteworthy commentary from the best blogs and research. MarketBeat is updated frequently throughout the day, helping investors stay on top of what’s happening in the markets. Lead writers Paul Vigna and Steven Russolillo spearhead the MarketBeat team, with contributions from other Journal reporters and editors. Have a comment? Write to paul.vigna@wsj.com or steven.russolillo@wsj.com.